Tobacco weighing hall
A tobacco weighing hall is a building that is used for weatherproof weighing of dried tobacco .
After the harvest, the tobacco was dried in tobacco sheds and then transported by the farmer to the tobacco weighing hall to be weighed there. The quantitative recording of the tobacco was done not by measuring the volume but by measuring the weight. Together with the quality of the tobacco leaves, the weight determined the price that the tobacco buyer paid the tobacco farmer.
The first tobacco scales were built in the early 18th century. There was a tobacco scale in Germersheim by 1726 at the latest. In order to protect people and tobacco from the weather and to prevent the tobacco from gaining weight due to moisture absorption, many tobacco scales have been redesigned. Older tobacco weighing halls were wooden buildings, whose weather protection consisted essentially of a roof. A modern tobacco weighing hall made of prefabricated elements is located in Herxheim .
Together with the tobacco sheds and the tobacco beds in which the tobacco plants were grown, the tobacco weighing hall is part of the typical building infrastructure of a tobacco growing area. In the cultivation areas there used to be a tobacco weighing hall in almost every village. Since tobacco cultivation is hardly practiced in Germany any more, the tobacco weighing halls have lost their function and have since been largely demolished.
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- ^ Heinz, The development of the cultural landscape of the Rhine lowlands: between Karlsruhe and Speyer from the end of the 16th to the end of the 19th century. Self-published by the Geographical Institute of Heidelberg University, 1969, p. 131